The present invention relates to wagering games and gaming devices. More particularly, the present invention relates to a bonus game triggering event and a bonus game cooperating with same.
Gaming device manufacturers have long provided gaming machines and particularly slot machines employing a plurality of reels, wherein the reels each have a plurality of symbols. In those games, the player causes a number of reels to produce a random generation of a combination of symbols. If the generated combination, or a portion of the combination, matches one of a number of predetermined award producing or winning combinations, the player receives an award.
To increase player enjoyment and excitement, and to increase the popularity of the gaming machines, gaming device manufacturers constantly strive to provide players with new types of gaming machines that attract the player and keep the player entertained. One proven way manufacturers use to make their machines more popular is to increase the number and variety of winning combinations and provide more opportunities for the player to win. Providing more variety and opportunities holds the player's interest for a longer time and also enables the manufacturer to have a larger range of payouts for the winning combinations. The larger range increases the size of the largest possible payout of the gaming device. Large payouts tend to attract players.
One avenue that manufacturers have taken to provide more variety, opportunity, enjoyment and excitement has been to increase the number of paylines. Paylines are the lines of symbol positions or paystops that the machine analyzes to determine if the player has won an award. Original gaming machines had only one payline. Modern machines, sometimes called “line” machines, have multiple paylines that form combinations of reel symbols for the gaming device to analyze.
Machines having at least three reels and displaying at least three rows of symbols can also have diagonal paylines. Machines having five reels and displaying at least three rows have many possible paylines, wherein the only criterion is that each symbol of a payline must be adjacent to at least one other symbol of the payline. Consequently, certain known gaming machines can have twenty-five different paylines, wherein a player can make up to twenty-five different bets each time the player spins the reels.
Multiple paylines present multiple opportunities for the player to obtain a winning combination of symbols. Usually, players have to wager more to obtain the benefit of the multiple lines. Many games provide a bonus jackpot for playing the maximum number paylines (“max lines”) and/or the maximum number of coins per payline (“max coins”). Many newer games that have bonus games also require that the player wager max lines or max credits to be eligible for or to qualify for the bonus game or a jackpot. Certain players, however, do not wish to wager an amount necessary to play max lines or max credits.
As bonus games, in particular, have become and are expected to continue to become more popular and more prevalent, they have taken and will continue to take up more of the overall payout percentage for the gaming device. That is, a game designer must account for the average bonus game payout and the percentage of the time that the player obtains this average payout in determining the overall payout percentage for the machine. It is not unreasonable for a bonus game to account for thirty percent of the total payout percentage. This number may also increase.
A player who does not wager enough to qualify for bonus game play therefore loses this potentially increasing slice of the payout percentage. Such players play the gaming machine at what is commonly termed the “base” payout percentage, which equals the total winning percentage less the payout percentage of the bonus game. Requiring max lines or max credits for the bonus rewards a higher payout percentage to a player making such a wager. A need therefore exists for a game scheme that enables game designers to provide a fun and valuable bonus game to the player, require that the player wager max lines or max credits to qualify for the bonus game and provide a desired but not excessive disparity in the payout percentage between eligible and non-eligible players.
One solution has been to provide a payout to the player who wagers less than max lines or max credits but achieves the symbol combination along an active payline that would otherwise trigger the bonus game. For example, if three cherries trigger the bonus game when the player wagers max lines, the game employing the known solution would pay a certain amount times the coins wagered when the player plays less than max lines. The amount is calculated in the following manner. If a bonus game, for example, pays out twenty coins or credits per coin wagered, on average, then the bonus triggering combination pays out preferably slightly less than twenty coins, e.g., eighteen coins, per coin wagered when less than all lines are wagered. In this way, the game adds a percentage, i.e., 90%, of the bonus game's contribution back to the overall payout percentage.
The problem inherent in that known solution is that wagering less than all paylines guarantees the above described payout, while many bonus games come with no such guarantee. Certain bonus games involve risk and chance and in many cases very high payouts associated with very low winning percentages. The player may therefore achieve a payout significantly less than average in the bonus game. In such a case, the player would have been better off to wager less than max credits or max lines. That creates a disincentive to play max coins or max lines to qualify for the bonus game, which in turn deprives the player of the enjoyment and excitement of playing such game.
If the game designer attempts to guarantee a certain payout percentage in the bonus game, e.g., sixteen coins per coin wagered, then the average payout for the bonus game rises, an even larger slice of the total payout percentage now comes from the bonus game, and the player not wagering max lines is again disadvantaged. Accordingly, another solution is needed.